Saturday, September 26, 2015

Conservatives - okay, let's call them what they are, extremists - are trying to find anti-gay condemnation in Pope Francis' statements to date during his papal visit to the United States, the reality is that he has said nothing. And when he has talked about the family, he did not use any of the favorite phrases of the Christofascists and parasitic professional Christian crowd such as "one man and one woman" or "children need a mother and a father." Even some anti-gay Catholic bishops may be flummoxed that Francis missed his golden opportunity to condemn marriage equality. Michelangelo Signorile looks at Francis silence on the issue most important to the anti-gay crowd and the bottom feeders of the GOP presidential candidate pool. Has Francis changed official Church doctrine? No, but compared to the Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI, he was downright conciliatory through his silence. Here are highlights from Huffington Post:

The United States this past June did something that the Catholic
Church and the Vatican have for years railed against: granted marriage
equality to its gay and lesbian citizens. Yet, Pope Francis had nothing to say about it. Not then and not now.

Considering that Pope Benedict often vocally expressed harsh condemnation
of marriage equality -- even traveling to Spain to speak out against it
when that country was among the first to legalize marriage for gays and
lesbians and called it a "threat to the future of humanity"-- it's
astonishing how silent Francis is on the issue. I've noted in the past how
he had no comment as country after country in Europe legalized marriage
for gays and lesbians. And then this past June, he had no comment after
the U.S. Supreme Court decision.

And yet, while some of the American media noted
the significance of his non-mention of the issue during his address to
Congress, others were determined to read into his comments something
that simply was not there.

All of this seemed to be part of an insistent mainstream media narrative
that the pope, on his trip to the U.S., is making comments that "both
sides" -- mostly meaning Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and
progressives -- will be happy about. This is simply not true. The pope
spent little time in his address to Congress on abortion -- without
mentioning the word -- while going full force against the death penalty
and emphatically using the term. From climate change to immigration, his
passions are clear. Even conservatives are noting that on abortion and gay equality, the pope was subdued.

No mention of marriage being between a "man and woman" or children
needing a "mother and a father"? Really? No mention of passing laws
that could inhibit marriage for gays and "protect" those opposed to it,
like the Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis? That, again, is astonishing. Francis
was, after all, speaking to the legislative body that could do
something about it -- and which is trying to, with Republicans having introduced
the odious First Amendment Defense Act, which would allow clerks like
Kim Davis and bakers and florists and others to deny services to gay and
lesbian couples.

Also sitting right before Francis during his
address to Congress were three of the five Supreme Court justices -- a
majority of the majority -- who ruled for marriage equality in June:
Justices Sotomayor, Ginsburg and Kennedy. The pope had his big chance to
be clear and emphatic about the terrible thing they'd supposedly done
and he blew it? Maybe he just didn't care all that much.

The pope's main concern about the family, according to what he said in
his comments to Congress, is that people -- children in particular --
seem to be "disoriented and aimless, trapped in a hopeless maze of
violence, abuse and despair." That sounds more like someone promoting
social programs to help the poor and stop gun-violence than someone
trying to end same-sex marriage.

Francis may still be more emphatic at the conference on families he's
attending in Philadelphia after his trip to New York. We'll know for
sure in a couple of days.

But so far, the pope at best spoke in
code -- as when, during his address at the White House, and sounding
like Republican political candidates, he talked of defending "religious
liberty" in the context of also protecting people against discrimination
-- and at worst (for anti-gay conservatives, of course) he completely
dodged the issue during his address to Congress, focusing instead on
other forces plaguing the family. Whether or not it's all calculated,
and though it represents no change of any kind in the doctrine of the
church, it's still a win for LGBT people and an angering loss for
anti-LGBT forces in America.

Rev. John McNeill, second from right, in New York’s gay pride march in the 1980s. He wrote “The Church and the Homosexual.”Credit
Charles Chiarelli

When I first came out, one of the first tasks that I had to overcome was the anti-gay poison I had been fed being raised Roman Catholic where almost all things sexual were sinful, but where homosexuality topped the list of what was too horrible to contemplate. One of the early books that I read was The Church and the Homosexual by Rev. John McNeill, a Jesuit and openly gay man. The book was the first to challenge the Catholic Church's mistreatment of gays and to challenge its false theology. Combined with therapy sessions with a Ph.D psychologist who was also an ordained Presbyterian minister and other reading, I eventually rid myself of the self-hate sown by my religious upbringing. Earlier this week, Rev. McNeill died at age 90. The New York Times has details on McNeill's remarkable life. Here are highlights:

The
Rev. John McNeill, an openly gay Roman Catholic priest who, from the
1970s onward, publicly pressed the church to welcome gay men and
lesbians — and who was expelled from his order as a result — died on
Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 90.

His death was announced by DignityUSA,
an organization that supports gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
Catholics. Father McNeill had helped found its New York chapter in 1972.

A
Jesuit who was ordained in 1959, Father McNeill was known in the
decades that followed as an author, activist and psychotherapist
specializing in the needs of gay clients. He first came to wide,
explosive attention in 1976 with the publication of his book “The Church and the Homosexual.”

That
book was the first extended nonjudgmental work about gay Catholics, a
subject that had long been taboo in official church discourse. It has
been credited with helping to set in motion the re-evaluation of the
religious stance toward gay people — not only among Catholics but also
among those of other faiths — that continues today.

‘The
Church and the Homosexual’ became the primary text that is still
considered the key in transforming the conversation on religion and
homosexuality.”

For
Father McNeill, the book, and his disclosure soon after its publication
that he was gay, would lead to years of public opprobrium, censure by
the church, exclusion from his order and, in the end, a newfound level
of activism that sustained him to the end of his life.

“He
was a gay man who was a Jesuit priest — and being a gay man who is a
Jesuit priest, by the way, is not an unusual thing,” Mary E. Hunt, a
Roman Catholic feminist theologian and longtime friend of Father
McNeill’s, said on Friday. “The difference is that John McNeill was
honest, and he was honest early. And being honest early meant that he
paid a large price.”

In
the book, he argued that a stable, loving same-sex relationship was
just as moral, and just as godly, as a heterosexual one and should be
acknowledged as such by church leaders.

After
an extensive review of the manuscript by a panel of theologians, “The
Church and the Homosexual” was published under the imprimatur of the Vatican. Translated into several languages, the book caused an international sensation.

At 17, he enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the 87th Infantry.
While serving in France, he was taken prisoner by the Nazis. Transported
to a prisoner-of-war camp near Leukenwald, Germany, he was kept in a
sealed boxcar for days without food or water. He licked frost from the
boxcar nailheads until his tongue bled.

After
the war, he graduated magna cum laude from Canisius College in Buffalo
and earned graduate degrees from Bellarmine College in upstate New York
and Woodstock College in Maryland. In 1959, he was ordained by Cardinal
Francis Spellman, the archbishop of New York.

Father
McNeill began doctoral studies at the Catholic University of Leuven, in
Belgium, in 1961. He was achingly lonely, he recalled, and considered
suicide. Then he fell in love with another man.

“The
experience of the joy and peace that comes with that — it was a clear
indication to me that homosexual love was in itself a good love and
could be a holy love,” Father McNeill said in the film.

By
1970, keenly aware of the self-hatred and depression that many gay
Catholics experienced, he began ministering to them. He later trained as
a psychotherapist at the Institutes of Religion and Health in New York.

He began speaking publicly on gay Catholic issues in the early 1970s, and in 1976 published “The Church and the Homosexual.”

Though
the church had approved the book, it reneged over the next year, as
Father McNeill became widely known as a gay-rights champion. In 1977,
the Vatican ordered him not to speak or write publicly on the subject.
Out of his deep fealty to his religion, and his feeling that the church
needed time to come to terms with the issue, he agreed.

He
obeyed the order for nearly a decade, though he continued quiet
pastoral work with gay men and lesbians. Over time, however, two things
spurred him to speak out, though he knew that in doing so he risked
expulsion from his order.

The
first spur was the AIDS epidemic, to which he increasingly turned his
attention. With the Rev. Mychal Judge, Father McNeill, then living in
New York, established an AIDS ministry, serving homeless people in
Harlem. (Father Judge, a Roman Catholic priest who privately identified
himself as gay, was killed in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade
Center while aiding New York City firefighters.)

The second spur was an official document, “On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,”
issued by the Vatican in October 1986. It was released above the
signatures of Archbishop Alberto Bovone and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. . . . .The
document, known as a pastoral letter, declared that homosexuality was
“a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil.”

In
November, Father McNeill condemned the letter in a statement issued to
The New York Times and The National Catholic Reporter. Cardinal
Ratzinger responded by ordering him to keep silent on the subject, and
to cease his pastoral work with gays and lesbians, or risk expulsion
from his order.

Father McNeill demurred, and in early 1987, on the Vatican’s orders, he was expelled from the Jesuits. . . . He
continued his psychotherapy practice and became more visible than ever
as an activist. In 1987, he was the grand marshal of the New York City
gay pride parade.

Father
McNeill, who also taught at Fordham University and elsewhere, had lived
in Fort Lauderdale in recent years. Mr. Chiarelli, whom he married in
Toronto in 2008, is believed to be his only immediate survivor.

His
other books include “Taking a Chance on God: Liberating Theology for
Gays, Lesbians, and Their Lovers, Families and Friends” (1988) and
“Freedom, Glorious Freedom: The Spiritual Journey to the Fullness of
Life for Gays, Lesbians and Everybody Else” (1995).

John McNeill underscored the reality that one person can help change the world for the better.

New York Republican Peter King is not what most would consider a moderate, but in today's utterly insane Republican Party, King actually looks more and more sane in relative terms. With John Boehner's sudden announcement that he will resign as Speaker of the House and from Congress entirely by the end of October, King has lamented that it is clear that "the crazies" have taken over the GOP. While I have never liked Boehner - who I see as a largely spineless man - his main role has been to try to rein in the utterly insane in the House GOP. With him gone, what type of utter lunatic will the swamp fever ridden Christofascit/Tea Party controlled political whores try to put in Boehner's place. Here are highlights from Politico:

House Speaker John Boehner's sudden
resignation Friday "signals that the crazies have taken over the
party," New York Republican Peter King said Friday.

“I think it signals the crazies have
taken over the party, taken over to the party that you can remove a speaker of
the House who’s second in line to be president, a constitutional officer in the
middle of his term with no allegations of impropriety, a person who’s honest
and doing his job. This has never happened before in our country," King
said in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash on Friday afternoon. "He could
have stayed on.”

“There was actually, I thought, like
a hush in the room for a few seconds where no one — people like looked at each
other — they couldn’t believe it. And then he read the prayer of St. Francis,
which was very moving," King said of the moment when Boehner told fellow
lawmakers that he was leaving office.

"I’m not a psychologist but I
think John probably pretty much decided that the more he did, the more friction
would be caused, and that he probably thought it was best for him to leave soon
anyway, which I think is wrong," he said. "But having the pope here
yesterday just sort of put John in the frame of mind [that] it’s time to
leave."

Boehner's decision to resign is
"like throwing raw meat" to more extreme factions of the caucus who
are trying to "hijack and blackmail the party," King said.
"They’re not going to see it as a gesture of peace, they’re going to just
look for more."

“I think whoever runs for speaker
should make it clear that he’s not going to give in to these people. We’re not
going to appease them," he concluded. "The time for appeasement is
over.”

No one has done more to inject religion into politics than the Republican Party and its masters among the Christofascists and the nations plutocrats such as the Koch brothers. The former have done so in an effort to force their increasingly foul religious beliefs on all Americans - and to crush out anything that threatens the fairy tale world they live in - while the latter have do so out of cynicism and a desire to feed their greed and push a vulture like version of capitalism. While Francis drinks from the dame Kool-Aid when it comes to obsession with all things sexual, on most other fronts he remains in touch with objective reality and part of that reality is that the far right's efforts to build a new Gilded Age and to rape the Earth of its resources run directly afoul of the Gospel message. Stated another way, Francis sees the so-called "prosperity gospel" so loved by the professional Christian crowd (with themselves a prime beneficiaries) as a lie and blasphemous. His pounding of the idols of the far right terrifies them because (i) the fear others will see that their economic policy emperor has no clothes, and, worse yet, (ii) that they are utterly wrong. A piece in Salon looks at this phenomenon. Here are excerpts:

Republican legislators who attended Pope Francis’ address to Congress
were apparently relieved that he didn’t threaten them with fire and
brimstone, and that he said that human activity is causing
“environmental deterioration,” rather than using the dreaded words
“climate change” or “global warming.” What remains clear, however, is
that they won’t listen to anyone about this subject – not the
overwhelming majority of scientists, not economists, not public policy
analysts, and not the world’s most famous religious leader.

All
of this raises an interesting question: Why exactly are the Republicans
so determined to ignore reality? Why won’t they listen to anyone? The
answer is actually simple: The reality of climate change demonstrates
that progressives are right and they are wrong. Not just wrong about the
effect of human activity on the environment, but wrong about their
basic approach to the problems of the modern world.

Republican ideology is based on the idea of freedom for capitalists
(another concern voiced by Pope Francis). For progressives, freedom
involves the ability of ordinary people to express themselves, to choose
their own level of religious observance and, increasingly, to receive
the education and healthcare that they need to function in modern
society. For conservatives, it means the ability of property owners and
large corporations to use their economic power any way they wish, to
determine exactly how they will treat their employees and what they will
say to the consumers who depend on the products they produce.

Americans have rejected this approach for over 100 years, perhaps since the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. . . . . we have insisted that the impact of these enterprises on the
environment needs to be regulated as well, and that they cannot be
permitted to pour poison into our waters and fumes into our air at will.

Recognizing
the reality of climate change will necessarily lead to further forms of
regulation. That reality emphasizes what physical and social scientists
have come to recognize in recent years: that the most recent geological
era (usually called the holocene) has ended, and that we are now in an
entirely new situation, often described as the anthropocene – the era of
human domination.

All this means that conservatives are simply wrong. We’ve gone past the
point where the large enterprises that determine the health of the
economy, our working people, our environment, and now our planet, can be
left to do what they wish.

People don’t like to admit that they are wrong, however. Children stamp
their feet or burst into tears. Adults concoct bizarre conspiracy
theories (tens of thousands of scientists, from all over the world, have
joined together to perpetrate a hoax), engage in outright denials in
the face of overwhelming evidence (Marsha Blackburn says that someone –
she won’t say who — told her that the Earth is getting cooler) and
insult anyone who tells them something they don’t want to hear (even if
that person is the leader of a religion they’ve been touting as the
truth for decades). But the conservatives are wrong — wrong about
climate change and wrong about their entire approach to governing our
nation. It’s time for everyone else to stop listening to them.

It is far past the time that conservatives cease being afforded credibility. Sadly, lazy journalists cling to their "fair and balanced" fantasy which allows them from having to do the work to challenge bullshit statements and lies from both Republicans and foul Christofascists such as Tony Perkins.Pope Francis may be wrong on matters of sexuality and the control of women's bodies - why is it the celibate men with no sexual or head of family experience claim to be the authorities? - he is right on the basic falsehood the conservative agenda in America.

While Pope Francis has yet to do anything to change the Roman Catholic Church's anti-gay, anti-women, and sex obsessed dogma - much of which traces back to the 13th century - it is nonetheless most entertaining to see him making pin pricks to the GOP bubble that is (i) tethered from objective reality, and (ii) mostly in direct contradiction to the Gospel message. A piece in Salon looks at the phenomenon. Here are excerpts:

Despite all the talk that Pope Francis’ address to Congress wouldn’t
be political or partisan, it turns out it was both. And, as I predicted here in Salon,
it definitely leaned to one side of the aisle. In fact, if you were a
conservative Republican, Thursday morning in the Congress was not your
finest moment, as Pope Francis laid bare all the ways that the
Republican agenda counters Catholic social teaching, from its harsh
treatment of immigrants to its fossil fuel-burning disdain for the
natural world.

And
Francis’ call for politicians to work for the common good was an
implicit rebuke to the do-nothing, obstructionist GOP agenda that’s in
service to their corporatist, Chamber of Commerce overlords. Here are the five key moments in Francis’ speech that made conservatives squirm more than any others:

The shout-out to Dorothy Day.
Francis commended four Americans in particular, whom he held up as
examples of pursuing the common good: Abraham Lincoln, for his pursuit
of liberty; Martin Luther King Jr., for his commitment to nonviolence
and pluralism; Trappist monk Thomas Merton, for his commitment to
dialogue and peace; and Dorothy Day, for her “social activism, her
passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed.” . . . None of them are exactly conservative, but Day in particular is noted as a radical social activist. . . . Day was outspoken in her support of pacifism and labor rights.

The abortion switcheroo. In defiance of the specific
guidance not to try to score political points by clapping at partisan
applause lines in Francis’ speech, congressional conservatives leapt to
their feet the moment Francis delivered the Vatican’s standard coded
language about abortion, mentioning “our responsibility to protect and
defend human life at every stage of its development.” Imagine their
shock when he immediately followed that with, “This conviction had led
me, from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different levels
for the global abolition of the death penalty.” Psych.

Calling arms deals “money drenched in blood.”
Speaking of death, what about all those arms deals the Republicans are
so fond of? Francis wanted to know who is selling the bad guys all these
weapons and why: “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan
to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?” The answer,
according to the pontiff, is “money: money that is drenched in blood,
often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence,
it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.” I’m
sure the GOP and all the defense contractors who give them money will
get right on that.

Reminding the GOP we’re all foreigners.
As in his speech at the White House on Tuesday, Francis felt the need
to once again remind those who are making intolerance toward immigrants
their political stock-in-trade that they, like him, are likely the
descendants of immigrant families.
In one of the most moving passages of his speech, Francis said, “Let us
seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves. Let
us help others to grow, as we would like to be helped ourselves. In a
word, if we want security, let us give security; if we want life, let us
give life; if we want opportunities, let us provide opportunities.”

Confronting the climate naysayers. Francis made it clear that combating climate change, development and technology can coexist. He explicitly rebuked many conservative critics
of his climate change encyclical “Laudato si,” who claim that he is
anti-commerce and wants to stifle development or reduce the world to
subsistence-level farming to stop climate change. “The right use of
natural resources, the proper application of technology and the
harnessing of the spirit of enterprise are essential elements of an
economy which seeks to be modern, inclusive and sustainable,” he said,
adding, “In this regard, I am confident that America’s outstanding
academic and research institutions can make a vital contribution in the
years ahead.”

On the plus for conservatives side, Francis did talk
about the need for “the voice of faith to continue to be heard,” but in
the case of this particular voice, conservatives probably wish he would
just be quiet.

I typically do not read columns by David Brooks in the New York Times because he is, in my view, generally wrong and takes a regressive position. But even the perennially wrong can on occasion get it right as Brooks does today in a column bemoaning what has become of the Republican Party and American conservatism in general and how the trend is harming the nation and betraying its founding principles and mindset. While he looks at the the trends in the conservative movement, he fails to look at the real root cause in my view: the rise of fundamentalist Christians within the GOP. Personally, I generally view religion as a scourge on the soul of mankind. But that scourge becomes a raging cancer when the religion is fundamentalist - whether Christian or Muslim - because it focuses on hatred of others and anyone and anything that threatens its ignorance embracing tenants. The good news, if any, is that the GOP is hopefully headed towards a eventual much deserved death. In the process its devotees are likely also hastening the decline of Christianity in America. Here are excerpts from the column:

Today
there are some conservative commentators and Republican politicians who
talk a lot about American exceptionalism. But when they use the phrase
they mean the exact opposite of its original meaning. In fact, they are
effectively destroying American exceptionalism.

These
commentators and candidates look backward to an America that is being
lost. Ann Coulter encapsulated this attitude perfectly in her latest
book title, “Adios, America.” This is the philosophy of the receding
roar, the mourning for an America that once was and is now being
destroyed by foreign people and ideas.

Out
of this backward- and inward-looking mentality comes a desire to
exclude. Donald Trump talks falsely and harshly about Hispanic
immigrants. Ben Carson says he couldn’t advocate putting “a Muslim in
charge of this nation.”

During
George W. Bush’s first term there wasn’t much difference between how
Democrats and Republicans viewed the overall immigration levels.
Republicans were about eight percentage points more likely to be
dissatisfied with the contemporary immigration flows. But now the gap is
an astounding
40 percentage points. Eighty-four percent of Republicans and 44 percent
of Democrats are dissatisfied with the current immigration level,
according to Gallup surveys.

As Peter Wehner, a longtime conservative writer who served in the Bush administration, wrote in the magazine Commentary:
“The message being sent to voters is this: The Republican Party is led
by people who are profoundly uncomfortable with the changing (and
inevitable) demographic nature of our nation. The G.O.P. is longing to
return to the past and is fearful of the future. It is a party that is
characterized by resentments and grievances, by distress and dismay, by
the belief that America is irredeemably corrupt and past the point of no
return. ‘The American dream is dead,’ in the emphatic words of Mr.
Trump.”

It’s not exactly breaking news that this is ruinous to the long-term political prospects of the party.

But
it’s also bad for the spirit of conservatism. American conservatism has
always been different than the conservatism found on continental Europe
and elsewhere. There it was based on blood and soil, here on promise.

American
free market and religious conservatives have traditionally embraced a
style of nationalism that is hopeful and future minded. . . .But this hopeful nationalism is being supplanted in the G.O.P. by an anguished cry for a receding America.

This pessimism isn’t justified by the facts. As a definitive report
from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine
recently found, today’s immigrants are assimilating as fast as previous
ones. They are learning English. They are healthier than native-born
Americans. Immigrant men age 18 to 39 are incarcerated at roughly
one-fourth the rate of American men.

It is one thing to think Democratic policies are wrong. It is another to
betray the essential American faith and take a reactionary attitude
toward life. This is an attitude that sours the tongue, offends the eye
and freezes the heart.

Republicans continue to whine and stamp their feet over the nuclear weapons agreement between Iran and the United States and its allies. All kinds of over heated and vitriolic remarks have been made and along the way condemnation of Iran's human rights record - which is horrible - are routinely thrown into the mix as to why America should reject the agreement and impose its own unilateral sanctions and/or launch a war against Iran. The hypocrisy of these critics is off the charts because in the next breath, many say that America has betrayed its allies: Israel, of course, and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile they ignore the even worse human rights abuse taking place in Saudi Arabia and the fact that the number one financier of Islamic terrorism and extremism is Saudi Arabia, not Iran. A piece in Huffington Post looks at this reality. Here are excerpts:

During the discussion on the Iran nuclear deal, it has been strange
to hear US politicians fiercely condemn Iranian human rights abuses
while remaining silent about worse abuses by US ally Saudi Arabia. Not
only is the Saudi regime repressive at home and abroad, but US weapons
and US support for the regime make Americans complicit. So let's look at
the regime the US government counts as its close friend.

1. Saudi
Arabia is governed as an absolutist monarchy by a huge clan, the Saud
family, and the throne passes from one king to another.The Cabinet is
appointed by the king, and its policies have to be ratified by royal
decree. Political parties are forbidden and there are no national
elections.

2. Criticizing the monarchy, or defending human rights,
can bring down severe and cruel punishments in addition to
imprisonment. Ali al-Nimr was targeted and arrested at the age of 17 for
protesting government corruption, and his since been sentenced to beheading and public crucifixion.Raif Badawi
was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for writing a blog
the government considered critical of its rule. Waleed Abulkhair is
serving a 15-year sentence for his work as a human right attorney. New legislation
effectively equates criticism of the government and other peaceful
activities with terrorism. The government tightly controls the domestic
press, banning journalists and editors who publish articles deemed
offensive to the religious establishment or the ruling authorities. Over
400,000 websites that are considered immoral or politically sensitive
are blocked. A January 2011 law requires all blogs and websites, or
anyone posting news or commentary online, to have a license from the
Ministry of Information or face fines and/or the closure of the
website.

3. Saudi Arabia has one of the highest execution rates
in the world, killing scores of people each year for a range of offenses
including adultery, apostasy, drug use and sorcery. The government has
conducted over 100 beheadings this year alone, often in public squares.

4.
Saudi women are second-class citizens. The religious police enforce a
policy of gender segregation and often harass women, using physical
punishment to enforce a strict dress code. Women need the approval of a
male guardian to marry, travel, enroll in a university, or obtain a
passport and they're prohibited from driving. According to
interpretations of Sharia law, daughters generally receive half the
inheritance awarded to their brothers, and the testimony of one man is
equal to that of two women.

5. There is no freedom of religious. Islam is the official religion, and
all Saudis are required by law to be Muslims. The government prohibits
the public practice of any religion other than Islam and restricts the
religious practices of the Shiite and Sufi Muslim minority sects.
Although the government recognizes the right of non-Muslims to worship
in private, it does not always respect this right in practice. The
building of Shiite mosques is banned.

6. The Saudis export an extremist interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism, around the globe. Over the past three decades, Saudi Arabia spent $4 billion per year
on mosques, madrassas, preachers, students, and textbooks to spread
Wahhabism and anti-Western sentiment. Let's not forget that 15 of the 19
fanatical hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks were Saudis, as
well as Osama bin Laden himself.

7. The country is built and runs
thanks to foreigner laborers, but the more than six million foreign
workers have virtually no legal protections. Coming from poor countries,
many are lured to the kingdom under false pretenses and forced to
endure dangerous working and living conditions. Female migrants employed
in Saudi homes as domestic workers report regular physical, sexual, and
emotional abuse.

8. The Saudis are funding terrorism worldwide. A Wikileaks-revealed 2009 cable quotes then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying
"Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of
funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide....More needs to be done
since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for
al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar e-Tayyiba and other terrorist groups." In
Syria the Saudis are supporting the most extreme sectarian forces
and the thousands of volunteers who rally to their call. And while the
Saudi government condemns ISIS, many experts, including 9/11 Commission
Report lead author Bob Graham, believe that ISIL is a product of Saudi ideals, Saudi money and Saudi organizational support.

9.
The Saudis have used their massive military apparatus to invade
neighboring countries and quash democratic uprisings. In 2011, the Saudi
military (using US tanks) rolled into neighboring Bahrain
and brutally crushed that nation's budding pro-democracy movement. In
2015, the Saudis intervened in an internal conflict in Yemen, with a
horrific bombing campaign (using American-made cluster munitions and
F-15 fighter jets) that has killed and injured thousands of civilians.
The conflict has created a severe humanitarian crisis affecting 80 percent of the Yemeni people.

10. The Saudis backed a coup in Egypt
that killed over 1,000 people and saw over 40,000 political dissidents
thrown into squalid prisons. While human rights activists the world over
where condemning the brutal regime of Al Sisi, the Saudi government
offered $5 billion to prop up the Egyptian coup leader.

The cozy
US relationship with the Saudis has to do with oil, weapons sales and
joint opposition to Iran. But with extremism spreading through the
globe, a reduced US need for Saudi oil, and a thawing of US relations
with Iran, now is the time to start calling for the US government to
sever its ties with the Saudi monarchs.

The Saudi royals and their regime are nothing short of barbaric. Remind me again why we are in bed with the Saudis? Oh, I forgot, so that "real Americans" can drive their jacked up pickup trucks and huge gas guzzling SUV's and/or live in homes far larger than what they need - just to name a few reasons.

If one wants to see just how low the Republican Party has fallen, look no farther than presidential nominee candidate Ben Carson. The once renown neurosurgeon - who some him knew him in the past have shared that they wonder if the man has had a nervous breakdown or what some other mental breakdown - has stated that Darwin was in league with Satan when he developed the theory of evolution. And video tape documents Carson's lunatic statements, so denial will be difficult. At est, he can claim he did not mean what he said and was merely prostituting himself to Christofascist. The take away? Do we really want a man who (i) is an opportunistic liar, or (ii) seemingly suffers from mental illness and/or out right insanity in the White House? Little Green Footballs looks at Carson's troubling batshitery. Here are highlights:

At LGF we’ve written several times
about GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson’s rejection of the
scientific theory of evolution in favor of young Earth creationism. But
here’s a video that graphically demonstrates just how regressive
Carson’s anti-science beliefs are.

In this speech delivered to the Adventist News Network’s “Celebration
of Creation” in November 2011, Carson shows ignorance of basic geology,
attributes fake quotes to “evolutionists,” ridicules scientists, and
last but not least, says Charles Darwin was influenced to come up with
the theory of evolution by none other than… yes, Satan. The Horned One.
His Nibs. In Carson’s words, “the Adversary.”

It’s shocking and disturbing that one of the frontrunners in the GOP
campaign for president holds these kinds of Dark Ages anti-science
beliefs. But while Carson’s statements may seem extreme, nearly all of
the GOP candidates in this race are creationists.

In addition to everything else that’s wrong with them in 2015 (and
that’s plenty), the Republicans are the party of hard core science
denial.

[20:56] “… there is abundant evidence, geological evidence, that
there was a worldwide flood. Go up into the Andes Mountains and see all
those fossils on the top of those mountains.

[24:34] “So we should be able to find intermediate species at any
given point in time, and we should be able to find how they line up. You
know Darwin said his whole theory depended on the fossil remains and he
said we should be able to line up from a single cell organism to man
several miles long and just walk right down the fossil trail and see how
everything evolved. And he said the only reason they didn’t have the
fossils was because they were not geologically sophisticated enough, but
that we would be in fifty to a hundred years. Well that was a hundred
and fifty years ago. We still haven’t found them. Where are they? Where
are the fossil remains?

[31:03]. “Well, now what about the big bang theory? I find the big
bang really quite fascinating. Now here you have all these highfaluting
scientists, and they are saying there was this gigantic explosion and
everything came into perfect order. [31:19] … [32:16] Well, but I mean
it’s even more ridiculous than that, because our solar system, not to
mention the universe outside of that, is extraordinarily well organized
to the point where we can predict 70 years away when a comet is coming.
Now that type of organization, to just come out of an explosion? …
[32:43] And then even if you want to use their own scientific theories,
you know you’ve got this mass spinning and then it explodes. In physics
we have something we call angular momentum and it is preserved, so it
should be preserved in any orbit of anything that is effected by gravity
around a planet, which means everything has to traverse in the same
direction. Well it doesn’t! There are many planets that have satellites
and moons that go in the opposite directions. So that doesn’t work with
angular momentum.” [33:19]

[36:49] “How are flowers able to reproduce? Pollination. How does
pollination occur? Bees and other creatures. Now according to evolution,
plants came along before the bees. So how did the plants reproduce? …
[37:41] … according to evolutionary model, you know we really came from
an ameba. And amebas, they just like split and then there’s two amebas.
So it seems to me like according to evolutionary model you do things
that are efficient. So rather than going out and looking for a mate you
would just divide, and then there would be two of you. … [38:16] But,
you know, things are supposed to work in an efficient way, so according
to the evolutionary model we would be less pugilistic, we would be much
more logical, we would be much more creative, we wouldn’t be going
around fighting each other and cutting off people’s heads anymore.
Because that stuff would be extinguished and we would have evolved into
something much better. According to the creation model, in which we have
an adversary, it’s very easy to explain why people act that way, it’s
because they have choice and because there is an adversary out there.
[38:57]

[answering a woman’s question, 45:07] “I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary [Satan],
and it has become what is scientifically politically correct.
Amazingly, there are a significant number of scientists who do not
believe it but they are afraid to say anything.”

As I have said before, I increasingly view conservative/fundamentalist religious belief as demonstrative of serious emotional and mental illness. If that is the case, then all of the GOP candidates belong under psychiatric care.

Up until now, Republicans have been only too happy it inject religion into politics and make one's adherence - at least outwardly, if not in fact - a litmus test for running for office and, most of all, to hold public office. Ben Carson's recent anti-Muslim statements illustrate this reality. Now, however, the same folks who readily prostitute themselves to Christofascists as a means to garner votes are up in arms that Pope Francis is pushing for action on climate change and arguing that religion and churches, such as the Catholic Church, have no business in raising the issue of, much less discussing climate change. They take similar offense at the Pope's targeting the evils of vulture capitalism and support for labor unions. A column in the Washington Post looks at the GOP hostility towards Francis and his message. Here are excerpts:

The pope addresses Congress Thursday, and
conservatives are fearing the worst. Their belief systems can tolerate a
lot — laissez-faire economics, xenophobia — but Pope Francis’s emphasis
on the Roman Catholic Church’s historic antipathy to capitalism has
them in a dither.

The Wall Street Journal laments his overt embrace of the “progressive political agenda of income redistribution.” My Post colleague George F. Will writes that, “Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nation’s premises.”

It’s not clear, however, whether the Journal and
Will’s argument is with the pope or with the Christianity of the saint
whose name he took, or even more fundamentally, with the Nazareth
carpenter whom Christians believe was the son of God.

Suppose, for instance, that the pope elects, in his address to Congress, to repeat one of that carpenter’s most famous quotes: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

Based on past performance, can we expect some Republican congressman to leap to his feet and shout, “You lie,” or Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to shake his head in dissent? Both occurrences greeted addresses to Congress by President Obama, speeches that were nowhere remotely as inflammatory as those in a recent papal encyclical, much less the Sermon on the Mount.

In place of our current system, Francis has recommended giving workers
more power — in particular, promoting worker-owned and -run
cooperatives. . . . . On the U.S. political spectrum, this kind of advocacy for worker control
plunks you down firmly on the left: Indeed, the primary author of
legislation that would promote worker co-ops if Congress ever sought fit
to pass it is one Bernie Sanders. But Francis’s critiques of capitalism aren’t peculiar to the left wing of the church.

Where Francis has departed from his
predecessors is that he has moved from talking the talk to walking the
walk. The simplicity of his lifestyle, his emphasis on spending time
among the poor and giving workers more control of economies where the
deck, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has said, is stacked against
them, are all radical departures from past papal practice. So, too, is
the tolerance he has shown to gays, lesbians and divorcees — a tolerance
that has roused the ire of church conservatives, for whom intolerance
to these and kindred groups seems to express the essence of their
Catholicism.

These conservatives lament
that Francis has de-emphasized the church’s traditional fear and
loathing of women and sex. How a church governed by male celibates
should have come to view its areas of core competency as gender
relations and reproduction is a good question. By returning to the kind of issues that St.
Francis and the Nazarene focused on — stewardship of the Earth,
championing of the have-nots — Francis has been a great disappointment
to those Catholics nostalgic for the spirit, if not the letter, of the
Inquisition.

A pope infused by the spirit
of St. Francis of Assisi and Jesus poses a threat to the current
economic order. Conservatives are right to fear and despise him, as they
would be right to fear and despise his role models.

The final scene of George Bernard Shaw’s play “Saint Joan”
places Joan of Arc in a dream sequence in which all her persecutors,
once she’s safely dead and canonized, praise her and acknowledge her
sainthood. When she asks them if she should return to Earth and live
again, however, they answer with fear, loathing and a resounding “no.”
That, in essence, is the conservatives’ response to Pope Francis, and to
the spirit and faith he embodies.

It would be delicious to see the tables turned on the GOP which has insidiously used religion to do evil and support greed.

One of the stark commonalities between the Christofascists and far right Republicans (to the extent they aren't one and the same) is their hatred towards others. And "others" includes a lengthy list of people: gays, blacks, Hispanics, Jews, non-Christians, Muslims, etc., etc. Behind this hate is a desire to maintain power and control - privilege, if you will - and to combat anything and everything that challenges their world view, much of which is based on a selective reading of a book of fiction: the Bible. As a piece in Salon notes, through out America's history there have been those who have used hate and related paranoia to further their own interest, often to the detriment of most of society. This hasn't changed and the GOP has perfected the use of hate towards the "other" to dupe the ignorant and bigoted into voting against their own interests, Here are column highlights:

Is Ann Coulter an anti-Semite? What’s interesting to me
about Coulter’s notorious tweet (“How many f—ing Jews do these people
think there are in the United States?”) isn’t what it does or doesn’t
reveal about her, but the light that it sheds on the deep archetypes of
American conservatism.

Watching
the two Republican debates, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d come,
in Kurt Vonnegut’s phrase, “unstuck in time.” Ted Cruz looks to me like
a silent movie villain from the 1920s, and he talks like a wax cylinder
recording of a Texas governor from the 1920s. Jeb Bush is, well,
another Bush. Mike Huckabee is a beefier, more homespun Pat Robertson.
And for all that he is a product of New York real estate and reality TV,
Donald Trump is the living embodiment of the rural Populism that arose in the late 19th century.

Populism Populism is all about fear and hatred, and starting around
the 1890s, when the myth of Jewish money power and the tide of Eastern
European Jewish immigration were both at their peak, the fear and hatred
of Jews in particular.

The so-called Jewish plot to
undermine the economic and moral foundations of Christendom and rule it
from Jerusalem was laid out in detail in the infamous “Protocols of the
Elders of Zion,” a libelous forgery that was first published in
Russian in 1903 and widely translated and circulated in the 1920s,
when, not coincidentally, the Nativist Ku Klux Klan was enjoying a huge
revival in this country and one of America’s richest and most powerful
businessmen, Henry Ford, was weighing a run for the presidency. Ford
also published a newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, that was almost
entirely dedicated to the “Jewish problem.”

Elizabeth Dilling, an anti-Communist crusader of the 1930s whose book
“The Roosevelt Red Record and its Background” has often been compared to Ann Coulter’s “Treason,” also wrote a book-length indictment of “Talmudism,” “The Plot Against Christianity.”

Racism runs deep in the Republican Party, as we have all learned, seven
years into the presidency of Barack Obama. But the kinds of hatreds that
animated Elizabeth Dilling, if not Ann Coulter, run much deeper than
nasty tweets or even racial gerrymandering and voter suppression.
Historically, the American Paranoid’s reigning obsessions were:

1) Papism.
Back in the 1600s, American colonists worried about Jesuit subversion.
From the 1830s to the Civil War, the Know Nothing movement attacked
Roman Catholic Irish and German immigration. A second great wave of
anti-Catholic feeling arose during the Populist era, between the 1890s
and into the 1920s (the KKK was as anti-Papist as it was anti-black and
anti-Jew).

2) Atheistic intellectualism. There were
McCarthy-esque witch hunts against Masonry and Illuminism in the 1790s
and again in the late 1820s and ‘30s. To its historical enemies, Masonry
occupied much the same space that secular humanism does today; its
chief sin was that it elevated reason and science above revealed
religion.

3) Calibanic Demonicism. This is my own
coinage; I use it as a shorthand for what our forebears saw as the
unbridled sexuality and unregenerate sinfulness of natural man, as
embodied in blacks and indigenous Americans—attributes that would also
be ascribed to Suffragists and to birth control advocates, both then and
now (Google “Sandra Fluke” and “Rush Limbaugh” to see) and to LGBT
people today. A simpler shorthand might be “sex.”
4) The Anti-Christ. This last includes Jewish bankers,
Jewish arms dealers, and Jewish pornographers, which is to say
Hollywood producers and popular culture purveyors, as well as the “left
wing media.” . . . . In the classic American Paranoid understanding, Communism was
fundamentally Anti-Christian and shared the same goals as the
Rothschilds and their heirs.

The corporate interests and other deep pockets that have historically
exerted the most power in this country, and that are the most deeply
invested in the Republican Party today, have never been monolithic in
their aims or beliefs; . . . . But they haven’t necessarily disbelieved them either, and they’ve never
stopped using them to manipulate debt-burdened dirt farmers, struggling
artisans, and exploited (or nowadays discarded) factory workers to vote
against their economic interests.

The deep substructure of Hate remains pretty much as it was, but its
superstructure has changed beyond recognition. Hitler made anti-Semitism
disreputable, as, after much struggle, the civil rights movement did
the most overt forms of racism . . . Nativism is resurgent, as Donald Trump’s continuing success daily
proves. With Catholicism, anti-Semitism, and overt white supremacism off
the table, Islam and Sharia have taken their place, alongside sex and
anti-scientism (which never went away).

The party of Lincoln has become the
home of many neo-secessionists, who left the Democrats en masse after
LBJ’s great betrayal in the 1960s, and to numerous Libertarians, who
believe that all government is tyranny.

All of these
people–many of whom wouldn’t have 10 words to say to each other if they
had to sit next to each other on a long airplane flight–have crowded
into the Republican big tent, along with the usual suspects who think
that their taxes are too high and their businesses over regulated.

Seen in this light, it makes perfect sense that Carly Fiorina would have
singled out Iran and Planned Parenthood as America’s two greatest
existential threats, or that the legendary brain surgeon Ben Carson
would attest to his disbelief in evolution (and that all of the
candidates would dismiss the science behind climate change).

As for Trump, one thinker who wouldn’t be surprised by his success is
the economist F.A. Hayek, one of the GOP’s patron saints. When a
minority is looking to hijack a democracy, he wrote in “The Road to
Serfdom,” it needs to attract a hard core of true believers.
They will look to bring in comparatively less-educated people, he wrote,
because “the higher the education and intelligence of individuals
become, the more their views and tastes are differentiated and the less
likely they are to agree on a particular hierarchy of values.” The
program they will be offered, he adds, must be negative: “the hatred of
an enemy…the envy of those better off….the contrast between the ‘we’ and the
‘they,’ the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an
essential ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit together a
group for common action.”

With Rick Perry and Scott Walker having bailed from the GOP clown car, pundits are casting about to discern who the beneficiary or beneficiaries of their exit might be. Some would name Marco Rubio as the principal beneficiary. However, given the swamp fever that prevails amongst the GOP base, it takes very little to excite the swarm of cretins, racists and religious extremists that now dominate the GOP base. A piece in Huffington Post under scores why Rubio is an empty suit and unfit of the office of the presidency. Here are excerpts:

[T]here is little of substance to commend promoting Rubio to president
in the political blink of an eye. His policy positions seem to involve
positioning himself with the party's right-wing base. Though forcefully
delivered, his foreign-policy prescriptions are no more novel than Dick
Cheney's: disavow the opening to Cuba and the Iran nuclear deal, pledge
allegiance to Benjamin Netanyahu, consider intervening militarily in
Syria and Iraq, and bulk up the military to project American power. His
anodyne budget proposals include that chestnut of political fantasies,
the balanced budget amendment. The current Rubio is so pro-life that he
grants no exception to victims of rape or incest.

His switch from
believer to climate change denier was augured when he coined the dodge
"I'm not a scientist" -- which, given that he is also not a general, an
economist, or an educator, if taken literally would seem to limit his
role as president to pardoning turkeys and lighting Christmas trees.

The
most egregious example of Rubio's evanescence on principles may be his
head-spinning about-faces on immigration. Running for the Senate in 2010
he disdained a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. But by 2013,
he became instrumental in a bipartisan group of senators whose
comprehensive immigration reform bill included just such a path,
underscoring his zeal with impassioned speeches inside and outside the
Senate. To his apparent surprise, the Republican base erupted in anger.
When his legislation passed the Senate, Rubio did not appear with his
colleagues at the press conference that followed. And four months later,
he publicly opposed his own bill's passage in the House. These dizzying
changes seem particularly soulless in a man who asserts that his
parents' immigrant experience is at the core of his political soul.

Equally problematic, Rubio is the poster child for the post-Citizens United systemic
distortion which surfaced in 2012: candidates disproportionally
financed by wealthy patrons (e.g. Newt Gingrich/Sheldon Abelson; Rick
Santorum/Foster Friese). But Rubio's ties to Florida billionaire Norman
Braman suggest more than a short-term rental. Once Rubio became a
Florida legislator, Braman funded his campaigns, financed his
legislative agenda, and subsidized his personal finances, employing
Rubio as a lawyer and his wife as a philanthropic advisor. While Speaker
of the Florida House, Rubio helped steer $85 million in state funds to
Braman's favorite causes. And now Braman is expected to spend at least
$10 million to help Rubio become president.

But Rubio is also a leading contender for the largess of Sheldon
Adelson, the right-wing ideologue who spent $100 million in the
presidential campaign of 2012. In addition to courting Adelson at a
half-dozen private meetings during which he laid out his foreign policy
vision, this summer Rubio cosponsored the casino mogul's top legislative
priority, a bill to outlaw Internet gambling. Lest Braman's and
Adelson's interests seem merely parochial, both men vehemently oppose
the Iran nuclear deal and criticize the proposed two-state solution
between Israel and the Palestinians. For whatever reason, Rubio now
espouses both positions, vowing to hamstring implementation of the Iran
nuclear pact by rear-guard legislative tactics.

The presidency is serious business -- too serious, one would hope, to
entrust to inexperienced candidates with malleable ideas and wealthy
patrons whose desires are far from malleable. In more serious times,
Rubio would be running for reelection to the Senate or, perhaps, for
governor of Florida, hoping to benefit his state while preparing himself
for national leadership.

. . . . Rubio is a political adolescent, still dressed in short pants, dependent on a scholarship funded by powerful benefactors.

Translate This Page

Contact Me to Order Title Work

LGBT Legal Services

About Me

Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

Disclaimer on Opinions and Content

This Blog contains content that may be innapropriate for readers under the legal age of 18. IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE, PLEASE LEAVE NOW. Thank you

This is an opinion and commentary blog and the opinions and contents of this Blog - including opinions expressed concerning opponents of LGBT equality - are the opinions only of the individual blogger and should not be attributed to any other individuals or to any organization of which the blogger is a past or current member.

Followers

Michael-in-Norfolk disclaims any and all responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, completeness, legality, reliability, operability, or availability of information or material displayed on this site and does not claim credit for any images or articles featured on this site, unless otherwise noted. All visual content is copyrighted to it's respectful owners. Information on this site may contain errors or inaccuracies, and Michael-in-Norfolk does not make warranty as to the correctness or reliability of the site's content. If you own rights to any of the images or articles, and do not wish them to appear on this site, please contact Michael-in-Norfolk via e-mail and they will be promptly removed. Michael-in-Norfolk contains links to other Internet sites. These links are provided solely as a convenience and are not endorsements of any products or services in such sites, and no information or content in such site has been endorsed or approved by this blog.